A friend and I have an idea we want to begin working on to take something small, rescale, and print it.

When talking with a friend pretty big into printing already, he suggested for scanning in the parts that we use a carousel that can have it’s speed controlled by the scanning app.

I didn’t have much luck in my initial searching so I thought I’d reach out to the community for suggestions of equipment/apps we can use to get the best possible scans.

Tia!

  • just some guyOPEnglish
    2•1 year ago

    That looks very much like what we hoped to find!

    Are the Pi and camera necessary for optimal scans, or are there other ways we can control the jigs(?) Movement?

    They certainly make sense for making it a one piece solution, but if we can use the iPad as the camera wed like to utilize what existing equipment we can.

    • @thepianistfroggollumEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      My plan is to have it just run off of an esp32 and run a 2.5mm cable to my dslr to control the shutter. I’m sure that someone sells a shutter button for the iPad that you can rig up to something to trigger it. There might even be a way to use Bluetooth for it. The esp32 has Bluetooth, but I’m not sure if it’s capable of sending Bluetooth requests like that (I haven’t messed with that feature) so you might need an intermediate server like Home Assistant to handle the shutter if you go that route.

      You don’t even need to use a pi. Pretty much any SBC should be able to run it, but an esp32 should be sufficient for a simple scanner, especially if you’re not uploading the pictures from the scanner.

      If you go the esp32 route, I’d recommend https://esphome.io. That way you don’t have to learn how to program in C.

        • @thepianistfroggollumEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          It would be super simple to code. Basically just a nested for loop that moves the motor a few steps then presses a button a few hundred times.